User talk:Mudeth

Please do not add or change content without verifying it by citing reliable sources, as you did to Nithya Menen‎. Please review the guidelines at Citing sources and take this opportunity to add references to the article. Thank you. Materialscientist (talk) 12:49, 4 August 2011 (UTC)

Nithya Menen and citations
Hi Materialscientist. I'm new to wikipedia, so please excuse me if I'm doing this wrong. I want to reply to your post on my talk page. Nithya is a close friend of mine and she has been asking me to make this change for a while. Unfortunately, I'm unable to find an authoritative citation on the web (you will notice that the previous citation for her being born in Calicut comes from a gossip/gallery page as well). Most pages are hastily thrown together photo galleries with ads, and they have leeched incorrect information off each other or from an incorrect wikipedia entry. The closest reliable source I can find is this - *edit - removed*, since it was spoken in the first person. I have asked her to state in *video* interviews that she was born in Bangalore. I'm waiting for a video of one of those to surface on youtube so I can link to it as an authoritative citation (she gave one right this morning, in fact). I have a scanned copy of her driver's license, but I don't want to use it as a citation for reasons of privacy. If there is a safe way of doing this, please let me know.

I hope you will appreciate that I'm doing this in the interest of accuracy, because this misinformation is being copied and pasted blindly into blogs and such. I'm taking the liberty of re-editing the article with this new citation, which I will update as soon as I can. Also, at some point I would like to maintain the page, but right now, Wikipedia seems too big and intimidating to get a handle on. :)

PS: Funny thing, the page that I wanted to use as a citation has been blacklisted by wikipedia, but for your personal review, I will post it here - http://tamil dot galatta.com/entertainment/livewire/id/Nithya_Menen_Unplugged_Exclusive_48930.html

-User 'mudeth' (I hope this will be automatically signed and linked and all that) mudeth (talk) 13:16, 4 August 2011 (UTC)
 * I'll reply here rather than on my talk (for no particular reason). Many individuals are notable enough to have their wikipedia articles, yet we can't find reliable references on such basic facts as their birthdate and even birth name. This might be the case with Nithya Menen, and the policy is "better less than unreliable". Any celebrity, especially female, might be interested in misrepresenting her birth date, thus her words are no reliable reference in this matter. Cheers. Materialscientist (talk) 13:22, 4 August 2011 (UTC)
 * The matter of contention here is place of birth, not date of birth. By your logic, the previous entry about her place of birth being Calicut should have been removed, but it had been lying there all this while without anyone correcting it. Why is this becoming a problem only when I try to correct it? If her own words are not authoritative, are you suggesting that we link to a birth certificate? I don't mean to be rude, but surely that isn't how other pages cite their facts. mudeth (talk) 13:28, 4 August 2011 (UTC)
 * It is very simple: we don't have enough editors to monitor all indiscriminate changes in our millions of articles, and sometimes miss those changes but sometimes react. In other words, if something stood for ages, it does not mean it should be so :-). Per WP:BLP policy, unsourced biographical information can, and often should be removed. By the way, I have looked through your interview link and it said her birthday was "recently", which doesn't fit to the date in the article. Materialscientist (talk) 13:54, 4 August 2011 (UTC)
 * MS, the page I have linked talks about PLACE OF BIRTH, which was the change that I made. The DATE OF BIRTH has NOT been changed by me ever (because it is accurate) :). I understand the policy, and appreciate completely the need for authoritative citation. I just want to know what you would consider as an authoritative source now that even a televised statement from her does not qualify. I will read the WP guidelines at length tonight; maybe my doubts will be cleared then. Thank you for all your help. :) mudeth (talk) 14:09, 4 August 2011 (UTC)

Hey Mudeth, I actually thought you had adressed me regarding her surname. Her surname was changed to Menon again by some IP user and my intention was only to revert that back to Menen. It has been noted in various reliable sources that her surname is spelled MENEN. That is correct, isn't? But I see the dispute seems to be over her place of birth and not her surname. The earlier source that mentioned her birthdate wasn't really reliable, and I know I should have removed it. That Galatta link however looks good, if that really is the only source available, we could perhaps try to whitelist that specific page only. I haven't tried whitelisting a page before, but I know that it's not an easy task to get a page unblocked. Maybe Materialscientist can help us. The only other way is that you have to convince your friend Nithya to give another interview to a notable website, like Rediff or Times of India. :D Let's see what I can do! Johannes003 (talk) 17:40, 4 August 2011 (UTC)
 * Thanks Johannes003. Yes, her name is indeed spelt differently. I will try digging up a better link than the Galatta one, doesn't make sense to whitelist it when we have better options to explore.

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